DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH, by ellioteast on Jul 23, 2021 20:06:08 GMT 1,
The painting depicts a seated girl, cross-legged on the ground with her right hand extended, holding a cut diamond in the palm of her hand. The artwork itself is painted on a vintage truck door; indecipherable graffiti spray paint in varying colors surrounds the seated girl, some of which was preexisting on the door, and some was added by Banksy himself.

The medium is comprised of three distinct techniques: freehand spray, stencil, and brushwork. The aerosol spray paint — both existing and additional by the artist — consumes the entirety of the background with near complete coverage, while subject of the seated girl is a pronounced overlay in Banksy’s signature greyscale stencil portraiture. The diamond itself, as well as its statement lines, are the sole freehand brushwork, other than the artist’s signature and date on the top right of the door. The combination of three techniques is noticeable as part of the overall composition — not quite collage, but collage-like in expression.

Unlike most of Banksy’s repeat stencil imagery such as Flower Thrower or Girl with Balloon, the seated girl with a diamond is extremely rare; it is known to have been reproduced only once before as a public artwork in Detroit, titled Girl with Diamond, when the artist did two street works in the area in 2010. That public artwork has since been destroyed when an unknown party attempted to remove it from the brick wall on which it was painted.


Interpretation


In her 2021 paper, art historian Sylvette Ruth makes the case that this artwork is not what it appears, but is actually a commentary on public artworks. She goes on to argue the artwork itself contains a multilayered message referencing art specifically produced for open view — both new and ancient — as a form of expression and historic record, but eventually removed from their places of origin or destroyed.

Ruth asserts upon closer examination, Diamond in the Rough appears to be a subtle allusion to the ancients — the illegible scribbling that hangs overhead weighted by a small human form below immediately channels Egyptian relief imagery, where human subjects at profile often occupy the lower field of plane, their arms extended in offering, and above hovers an exotic visual descriptive in symbols, most often a historic record or narrative. In this case of course, its appears indecipherable, but is in fact a language to those who can read them, symbols implied, and insider code of the street that could just as well be hieroglyphs of present day.

Hieroglyphics/Graffiti

The study focuses on Egyptian Hieroglyphs in particular, which combine logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements as a writing system, using numerous distinct characters. The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age — Egyptian hieroglyphs developed into a mature documentation used for monumental inscription in the classical language of the Middle Kingdom period; during this period, the system made use of about 900 distinct signs. The writing system continued through the New Kingdom and Late Period, and on into the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. With the final closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost. Although attempts were made, the script remained undeciphered throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was finally accomplished in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, with the help of the Rosetta Stone.

Ruth explains how this is likewise similar to graffiti. She outlines the choppy historic record of what certain graffiti represented, the lack of documented creators, and what it stood to represent reflects this form of record keeping. Public artworks and specifically street art of the 1980s closely resembled that of the ancient language, a symbiosis rooted in the messaging was oft not understood by outsiders, cartouches were akin to “tags”, the commentary from both hieroglyphs and graffiti was often funerary (someone died at the location of the artwork), a historical record, and/or inscriptions denoting power of someone or a particular gang (nee, Dynasty) who controlled drug trade in the area, or a group that enforced law in the territory.

Additionally in both graffiti and hieroglyphs, there seems to be a likeminded technique and style, where follow the same set of design principles. By this constant, the two forms of writing achieve a hypnotizing element to the messaging — the visual styles are universal, and instantly recognizable to its period. They methodology is inextricably linked to the style itself, sometimes the language makes no statement, but is not necessarily without meaning.

Some believed ancient hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish ‘true Egyptians” from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally.[citation needed] Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge.[4] This sentiment translates directly to the language of street art where the public works are as much about giving a voice to a socio economic faction of the population seeking to be part of the historical record, then they were simply vandalism…before digital platforms, an unheard and unrepresented youth invariably turned to graffiti as a soapbox.

Hieroglyphic inscriptions convey different types of information: numbers, indicating the origin of the goods, while more complex carvings show administrative information related to economic activities controlled by a certain Dynasty. Street art in both the gangland of New York and Los Angeles often became a way of marking a territory in the illegal narcotics trade, which organized gangs controlled. Geographic claims over territory made up most of the gangland disputes; graffiti largely served as narrative of these claims, much like the ancient inscriptions.

Additionally, in the Late Pre-dynastic/early dynastic transition, many hieroglyphs are royal commemorations found on ceremonial mastheads, funerary stone stelae and votive palettes: their function being to honor the memory of certain rulers both in terms of the achievements and their relationship with the various gods and goddesses. Street art murals often followed this same protocol of remembrance; murals serving as a memorials often adding halos, angel wings, or other religious symbols to the portraiture of a deceased leader or member, again creating the same link to the ancients.


The Offering

Ruth explains how in Diamond in the Rough the girl’s position and gesture is widely represented in Egyptian limestone carving both statuary and in wall relief, where a male or female in profile standing or sitting extends a hand outward with an offering to the Gods.

The girl’s flat hand, bend at the elbow, and positioning of the arm is the exact formation seen through late dynastic carvings; the iconography depicts pharaohs, high priests, or gods themselves making offerings to the alter, usually of food, water, pots or vessels containing medial ointments, wine or milk, or symbols representing life. The carvings mostly depict ceremonial rites both funerary and celebratory in nature, underscoring the mutually beneficial relationship between humanity and the Gods.

As for the actual offering in Diamond in the Rough, it is unclear what Banksy is suggesting, whether it’s an offering of his art, a child’s wish, or soul. Banksy’s use of children is familiar in his canon — for him, they embody a direct challenge to existing authority, disrupters of a general methodology or belief system, and dissolving walls and barriers. Clearly the offering of a “sparkling” diamond denotes value, but it also looks ‘cartoonishly’ fake as well.

In forums, some have said this is a funerary “Coffin test” and the offering is a gift to sop that the artwork will survive in the afterlife, or liken the symbolism as a commemoration or “royal achievement” in maintaining his anonymity. This orchestration of imagery has the viewer asking more questions than one traditionally does with one of Banksy’s artworks — oblique comic or political statements paired with his visual messaging are absent here, and instead ask the viewer to solve a puzzle.


Cut Corner

To reenforce the link to the ancient , Ruth specifically notes the defining sharp cut at the bottom right corner — the door itself is a vintage truck door, the castor wheels on the top allow a sliding motion, and the diagonal cut at lower right which is angled for the front wheel casing.

What’s less obvious is that the door’s sliced corner actually echoes that of oft missing corners from ancient marble and limestone reliefs, where age has left it with scars of time, moreover, the mark of an artifact excised from it’s ancestral home. Most of these reliefs in museum collections are rarely perfectly cut squares, but rather have jagged edges, usually with a full corner missing, a clear indication the work was physically removed from somewhere it was intended to be on permanent display. Just like Banksy’s public artworks are often non-consensually taken from their place of creation, so too have ancient artifacts been unceremoniously cut from the walls of sacred temples and tombs alike, and later placed in galleries and auctions houses. In both cases, this action is undeniably against what their creators would have preferred. In this instance however, it is signed and hung in a frame, so he cheekily endorses the self aware contradiction….furthermore, Banksy submits it to exhibit in a museum show about the history of street art.


Window as a Cartouche

In Hieroglyphs another constant is a cartouche, which is represented by an oval or racetrack shape, enclosed with the shape are symbols which denote a royal name, equivalent to a stamp or a seal. Ruth explains that the door’s window closely resembles the shape of the cartouche, and the graffiti markings within act as ‘identifier’ symbols found within ancient cartouches. The line that usually lies at the bottom of a cartouche is in this case the artist’s signature found just right of the window. (reference image)


Ruth concludes by questioning the critics who were quick to lambast Banksy’s artwork as being “commercial” or “advertising”, this artwork as case in point against those who labeled his work as lacking nuance. Critics such as Alexander Adams writes on the website Spiked that Banksy’s work is, “Simply the transcription of a witty pre-designed image in a novel placement. There is no ambiguity or doubt, no possibility of misinterpretation.” Ruth argues that the metaphysical nature and code in Diamond in the Rough proves otherwise, and writes that Adams was too “quick to dismiss”, as so many critics over the past century also misjudged the importance of artists such as Picasso, Rothko, and Duchamp.





Haring, Basquiat, and New York Street Art of the 1980s


A confluence of moments both socio-political and economic in the 1980s made in New York a hub for public artworks, some sanctioned, although most were unwelcome vandalism. Due to the lack of police presence on the subways during this time, New York subway cars in particular were are often painted upon for street artists to put their work on public view. (reference images). Diamond in the Rough nods to these early aughts of street art by using a layered graffiti composition, and more specifically, on a door that closely resembles that of a New York City MTA sliding subway door used to connect cars.

Diamond in the Rough specifically channels artists Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, who both often used the streets of downtown New York City as their canvas; Harring specifically enjoyed the subways, creating his famous blackboard drawings on the walls of underground stations, where Basquiat preferred scrawling on various metal grates and cement walls (both under his own name and his earlier tag “Sammo”). Even within his studio, Basquiat would appropriate found objects from the streets of Soho — discarded doors, metal panels, tires, crates, picket fencing — and use them as his template. Both artists aligned their visual narrative with the frenetic energy of the streets — the noise, the pace, the color, the diversity, the chaos, the sometimes panic inducing claustrophobia — inscribing it contextually within the city on an atmospheric level, elevating the gravitas of the compositions which dovetail into the surrounding landscape itself.

Banksy also uses Haring’s specific signature technique of “statement lines” with the emphasis on the sparking diamond held by the seated girl. The lines are seen as a constant throughout Haring’s artwork which indicates motion, emphasis, and presence (reference image).

Despite his anonymity, Banksy’s deep knowledge of art history is widely acknowledged by experts, with the continuous silver threads of scholarship seen in the majority of his works. His composition here which immediately summons Haring and Basquiat seems to be once again deliberately winking at the viewer, telling a joke and a riddle simultaneously, devising yet another way to confidently stand on the shoulders of giants, and be a giant himself.

The painting depicts a seated girl, cross-legged on the ground with her right hand extended, holding a cut diamond in the palm of her hand. The artwork itself is painted on a vintage truck door; indecipherable graffiti spray paint in varying colors surrounds the seated girl, some of which was preexisting on the door, and some was added by Banksy himself.

The medium is comprised of three distinct techniques: freehand spray, stencil, and brushwork. The aerosol spray paint — both existing and additional by the artist — consumes the entirety of the background with near complete coverage, while subject of the seated girl is a pronounced overlay in Banksy’s signature greyscale stencil portraiture. The diamond itself, as well as its statement lines, are the sole freehand brushwork, other than the artist’s signature and date on the top right of the door. The combination of three techniques is noticeable as part of the overall composition — not quite collage, but collage-like in expression.

Unlike most of Banksy’s repeat stencil imagery such as Flower Thrower or Girl with Balloon, the seated girl with a diamond is extremely rare; it is known to have been reproduced only once before as a public artwork in Detroit, titled Girl with Diamond, when the artist did two street works in the area in 2010. That public artwork has since been destroyed when an unknown party attempted to remove it from the brick wall on which it was painted.


Interpretation


In her 2021 paper, art historian Sylvette Ruth makes the case that this artwork is not what it appears, but is actually a commentary on public artworks. She goes on to argue the artwork itself contains a multilayered message referencing art specifically produced for open view — both new and ancient — as a form of expression and historic record, but eventually removed from their places of origin or destroyed.

Ruth asserts upon closer examination, Diamond in the Rough appears to be a subtle allusion to the ancients — the illegible scribbling that hangs overhead weighted by a small human form below immediately channels Egyptian relief imagery, where human subjects at profile often occupy the lower field of plane, their arms extended in offering, and above hovers an exotic visual descriptive in symbols, most often a historic record or narrative. In this case of course, its appears indecipherable, but is in fact a language to those who can read them, symbols implied, and insider code of the street that could just as well be hieroglyphs of present day.

Hieroglyphics/Graffiti

The study focuses on Egyptian Hieroglyphs in particular, which combine logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements as a writing system, using numerous distinct characters. The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age — Egyptian hieroglyphs developed into a mature documentation used for monumental inscription in the classical language of the Middle Kingdom period; during this period, the system made use of about 900 distinct signs. The writing system continued through the New Kingdom and Late Period, and on into the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. With the final closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost. Although attempts were made, the script remained undeciphered throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was finally accomplished in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, with the help of the Rosetta Stone.

Ruth explains how this is likewise similar to graffiti. She outlines the choppy historic record of what certain graffiti represented, the lack of documented creators, and what it stood to represent reflects this form of record keeping. Public artworks and specifically street art of the 1980s closely resembled that of the ancient language, a symbiosis rooted in the messaging was oft not understood by outsiders, cartouches were akin to “tags”, the commentary from both hieroglyphs and graffiti was often funerary (someone died at the location of the artwork), a historical record, and/or inscriptions denoting power of someone or a particular gang (nee, Dynasty) who controlled drug trade in the area, or a group that enforced law in the territory.

Additionally in both graffiti and hieroglyphs, there seems to be a likeminded technique and style, where follow the same set of design principles. By this constant, the two forms of writing achieve a hypnotizing element to the messaging — the visual styles are universal, and instantly recognizable to its period. They methodology is inextricably linked to the style itself, sometimes the language makes no statement, but is not necessarily without meaning.

Some believed ancient hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish ‘true Egyptians” from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally.[citation needed] Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge.[4] This sentiment translates directly to the language of street art where the public works are as much about giving a voice to a socio economic faction of the population seeking to be part of the historical record, then they were simply vandalism…before digital platforms, an unheard and unrepresented youth invariably turned to graffiti as a soapbox.

Hieroglyphic inscriptions convey different types of information: numbers, indicating the origin of the goods, while more complex carvings show administrative information related to economic activities controlled by a certain Dynasty. Street art in both the gangland of New York and Los Angeles often became a way of marking a territory in the illegal narcotics trade, which organized gangs controlled. Geographic claims over territory made up most of the gangland disputes; graffiti largely served as narrative of these claims, much like the ancient inscriptions.

Additionally, in the Late Pre-dynastic/early dynastic transition, many hieroglyphs are royal commemorations found on ceremonial mastheads, funerary stone stelae and votive palettes: their function being to honor the memory of certain rulers both in terms of the achievements and their relationship with the various gods and goddesses. Street art murals often followed this same protocol of remembrance; murals serving as a memorials often adding halos, angel wings, or other religious symbols to the portraiture of a deceased leader or member, again creating the same link to the ancients.


The Offering

Ruth explains how in Diamond in the Rough the girl’s position and gesture is widely represented in Egyptian limestone carving both statuary and in wall relief, where a male or female in profile standing or sitting extends a hand outward with an offering to the Gods.

The girl’s flat hand, bend at the elbow, and positioning of the arm is the exact formation seen through late dynastic carvings; the iconography depicts pharaohs, high priests, or gods themselves making offerings to the alter, usually of food, water, pots or vessels containing medial ointments, wine or milk, or symbols representing life. The carvings mostly depict ceremonial rites both funerary and celebratory in nature, underscoring the mutually beneficial relationship between humanity and the Gods.

As for the actual offering in Diamond in the Rough, it is unclear what Banksy is suggesting, whether it’s an offering of his art, a child’s wish, or soul. Banksy’s use of children is familiar in his canon — for him, they embody a direct challenge to existing authority, disrupters of a general methodology or belief system, and dissolving walls and barriers. Clearly the offering of a “sparkling” diamond denotes value, but it also looks ‘cartoonishly’ fake as well.

In forums, some have said this is a funerary “Coffin test” and the offering is a gift to sop that the artwork will survive in the afterlife, or liken the symbolism as a commemoration or “royal achievement” in maintaining his anonymity. This orchestration of imagery has the viewer asking more questions than one traditionally does with one of Banksy’s artworks — oblique comic or political statements paired with his visual messaging are absent here, and instead ask the viewer to solve a puzzle.


Cut Corner

To reenforce the link to the ancient , Ruth specifically notes the defining sharp cut at the bottom right corner — the door itself is a vintage truck door, the castor wheels on the top allow a sliding motion, and the diagonal cut at lower right which is angled for the front wheel casing.

What’s less obvious is that the door’s sliced corner actually echoes that of oft missing corners from ancient marble and limestone reliefs, where age has left it with scars of time, moreover, the mark of an artifact excised from it’s ancestral home. Most of these reliefs in museum collections are rarely perfectly cut squares, but rather have jagged edges, usually with a full corner missing, a clear indication the work was physically removed from somewhere it was intended to be on permanent display. Just like Banksy’s public artworks are often non-consensually taken from their place of creation, so too have ancient artifacts been unceremoniously cut from the walls of sacred temples and tombs alike, and later placed in galleries and auctions houses. In both cases, this action is undeniably against what their creators would have preferred. In this instance however, it is signed and hung in a frame, so he cheekily endorses the self aware contradiction….furthermore, Banksy submits it to exhibit in a museum show about the history of street art.


Window as a Cartouche

In Hieroglyphs another constant is a cartouche, which is represented by an oval or racetrack shape, enclosed with the shape are symbols which denote a royal name, equivalent to a stamp or a seal. Ruth explains that the door’s window closely resembles the shape of the cartouche, and the graffiti markings within act as ‘identifier’ symbols found within ancient cartouches. The line that usually lies at the bottom of a cartouche is in this case the artist’s signature found just right of the window. (reference image)


Ruth concludes by questioning the critics who were quick to lambast Banksy’s artwork as being “commercial” or “advertising”, this artwork as case in point against those who labeled his work as lacking nuance. Critics such as Alexander Adams writes on the website Spiked that Banksy’s work is, “Simply the transcription of a witty pre-designed image in a novel placement. There is no ambiguity or doubt, no possibility of misinterpretation.” Ruth argues that the metaphysical nature and code in Diamond in the Rough proves otherwise, and writes that Adams was too “quick to dismiss”, as so many critics over the past century also misjudged the importance of artists such as Picasso, Rothko, and Duchamp.





Haring, Basquiat, and New York Street Art of the 1980s


A confluence of moments both socio-political and economic in the 1980s made in New York a hub for public artworks, some sanctioned, although most were unwelcome vandalism. Due to the lack of police presence on the subways during this time, New York subway cars in particular were are often painted upon for street artists to put their work on public view. (reference images). Diamond in the Rough nods to these early aughts of street art by using a layered graffiti composition, and more specifically, on a door that closely resembles that of a New York City MTA sliding subway door used to connect cars.

Diamond in the Rough specifically channels artists Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, who both often used the streets of downtown New York City as their canvas; Harring specifically enjoyed the subways, creating his famous blackboard drawings on the walls of underground stations, where Basquiat preferred scrawling on various metal grates and cement walls (both under his own name and his earlier tag “Sammo”). Even within his studio, Basquiat would appropriate found objects from the streets of Soho — discarded doors, metal panels, tires, crates, picket fencing — and use them as his template. Both artists aligned their visual narrative with the frenetic energy of the streets — the noise, the pace, the color, the diversity, the chaos, the sometimes panic inducing claustrophobia — inscribing it contextually within the city on an atmospheric level, elevating the gravitas of the compositions which dovetail into the surrounding landscape itself.

Banksy also uses Haring’s specific signature technique of “statement lines” with the emphasis on the sparking diamond held by the seated girl. The lines are seen as a constant throughout Haring’s artwork which indicates motion, emphasis, and presence (reference image).

Despite his anonymity, Banksy’s deep knowledge of art history is widely acknowledged by experts, with the continuous silver threads of scholarship seen in the majority of his works. His composition here which immediately summons Haring and Basquiat seems to be once again deliberately winking at the viewer, telling a joke and a riddle simultaneously, devising yet another way to confidently stand on the shoulders of giants, and be a giant himself.